Study Questions Reliability Of Lead Paint Testing Process

A new government study casts more doubt on tests used to find lead-based paint in the nation's public housing projects.

A two-year study released last week found only one reliable method to find the poisonous paint. That method was not used in the nation's housing projects, where federal law required the completion of lead-paint testing by last December.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development now are left in a quandary. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove what they thought was lead-based paint in houses from Miami to Seattle, but the people living in those houses now have no assurance they are safe.

The cleanup continues, even as HUD spends a total of $655,000 to spot-check lead paint tests in 71 communities throughout the country.

Results are due later this summer.

The latest study, which cost more than $1 million, confirms reports published last year by The Orlando Sentinel that HUD's testing methods were unreliable.

Last month, HUD officials blamed Congress for requiring the cleanup of lead paint before anyone knew how to find it.

In 1993, HUD and the Environmental Protection Agency commissioned the first comprehensive study of lead testing methods.

The study centered on a hand-held X-ray machine that HUD said was the most efficient way for finding lead paint.

Critics, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said the machine was error-prone.

Even HUD acknowledged the machine had an error rate as high as 50 or 60 percent.

X-ray machines are as effective as a laboratory analysis of paint chips in finding heavy concentrations of lead.

But lead is dangerous even in tiny amounts, and when the concentrations are low, the machines make many errors.

The new study says the machines can effectively find lead paint if rigorous controls are followed and if lab tests confirm readings near HUD's danger threshold.

In Florida, The Orlando Sentinel found, most lead paint in public housing is close to that threshold, meaning expensive lab tests would be required for almost every surface tested by the X-ray gun.

While HUD officials mull over the study, public housing directors nationwide continue to remove paint that they think contains lead.

In response to Orlando Sentinel stories, HUD last year advised housing authorities to review their lead paint tests.

HUD provided no extra money for the reviews.

The entire argument could be moot. Scientists contend that the level at which HUD said lead is dangerous was set with no regard for health.